The Future Herd

48: The Herd To Harvest Collective Rewrites The CSA with Caylie Corvinelli

Summary: Caylie Corvinelli, a first-generation farmer and veterinary technician, explains how she and her husband launched the Herd to Harvest Collective, which asks eaters to buy a half or whole cow two years in advance and follow the herd through its life. It is a rethinking of the CSA that treats time, transparency and relationship as the product — and that gives a first-generation beef farm the cash flow it needs to survive. Show notes: Caylie Corvinelli farms beef, pork and eggs with her husband on 80 acres in Ontario, and she is the rare first-generation farmer whose path into agriculture came through veterinary technology rather than inheritance. In this episode she explains the central idea behind the Herd to Harvest Collective: that the community-supported agriculture model, which usually asks eaters to buy a season of vegetables upfront, can be stretched over the two-year lifespan of a beef animal. The result is a farm business built on relationship and foresight rather than cheap food and debt. The collective works by having eaters purchase a half or whole cow two years in advance, then follow the specific animal that will become their beef, with perks like 5% off at the farm store and locked-in 2026 pricing. Corvinelli is candid that the high ticket price means signups are slow — three or four so far — but that even those few commitments have already made a huge difference to a farm facing steep cattle costs. She argues that if the food system is going to change, farmers cannot be the only ones with skin in the game. Corvinelli describes the farm as regenerative, a label her husband resists, and grounds it in rotational grazing: about 20 cows and 18 calves moved every day to several days, with pastures resting 30 to 60 days so roots deepen, organic matter builds, and dung beetles and grassland birds return. The soil is the basis of all biodiversity, she says. She also credits her veterinary technician background with practical savings — castrating piglets herself, giving injections, avoiding a vet call where possible — while acknowledging she still cannot prescribe and that medicines like meloxicam can cost over $300 a bottle. The episode closes on what Corvinelli calls perspective shifts: the realisation after her daughter was born that her own internal voice needed changing, and the advice from a nutritionist friend to stop trying to eat 100% local overnight and instead make 10% changes as often as possible. She argues food is self-care and that the loneliness epidemic and the disconnect from food are the same problem. For Canada's agri-food sector, her farm store and collective point toward a farmer-owned food hub model where local money keeps local families farming. Topics: Regenerative grazing, Community-supported agriculture, First-generation farmers, Local food hubs, Farm business models, Veterinary costs, Soil biodiversity, Local food economy https://dalmenyacres.ca/ https://thefutureherd.ca/

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47: The New Grocery Movement: Food, Power, and Policy

Rebecca MacLeod, leader of the New Grocery Movement, argues that food insecurity in Canada is a policy decision — with roughly one in four people food insecure and income inequality as the main driver — and that fixing it requires both legislative change like a basic income and farmer supports, and bottom-up community organizing that rebuilds the local food infrastructure commercial grocery has eroded. She makes the case for public, not-for-profit grocery stores and neighbourhood food hubs as a genuine alternative that treats food less as a consumer transaction and more as a vehicle for community. Show notes: Rebecca MacLeod leads the New Grocery Movement, a national organisation working to build alternatives to Canada's commercial grocery system. In this episode she sits down with Jesse Hirsh to make a central claim: food is political, and the way Canadians access it — or fail to — is the product of policy choices, not scarcity. She argues that the movement's ambition isn't to reform the existing grocery system but to construct a different one that centres community, dignity and the basic right to eat well. MacLeod lays out the mechanics of the problem with stark numbers: roughly one in four people in Canada — about 10 million — are food insecure, even though the country produces enough calories to feed everyone. Because income inequality is the main driver, she argues that poverty, not production, is the issue, and that the barriers stack up long before affordability — whether the nearest grocery store exists, whether the farmers' market is open when you're not working, whether you can get there at all. Making the greenest grocery system imaginable means nothing, she says, if people can't walk through the door. A second thread runs through the conversation on psychology and convenience. MacLeod pushes back gently on the idea that consumers simply want fast, easy food, pointing out that for many people convenience is the only option given structural constraints — but she also names something harder: community is genuinely inconvenient, requiring time, energy and showing up for people you don't always agree with. She describes food literacy as the lowest-hanging fruit of systems change, where even one tomato grown on a balcony can shift how someone sees a supermarket shelf. Listeners come away with a concrete picture of what could come next: universal or guaranteed basic income, a just transition for farmers squeezed between consolidated input suppliers and consolidated retailers, and public grocery stores and neighbourhood food hubs that keep prices down, pay workers fairly and give communities space to grow, cook and share food beyond the consumer transaction. In a sector where anger about grocery prices now crosses political lines, MacLeod's argument matters because it reframes that frustration as a shared opening — and insists the change is within reach, not something to leave to the next generation. https://newgrocerymovement.com/ https://thefutureherd.ca/ Topics: Food insecurity, Food politics, Public grocery stores, Food hubs, Basic income, Farmer transition, Community organising, Food literacy

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46: Navigating the Complex Economics of Upcycled Food Manufacturing with Dr. Alexandra Grygorczyk

Summary: In this episode, Dr. Alexandra Grygorczyk of Vineland Research explores the intricate economic realities of upcycled food manufacturing in Canada. She joins Jesse Hirsh to discuss why treating byproducts as valuable ingredients requires new supply chains, structural shifts in processing, and a careful approach to consumer psychology. Show notes: The agri-food sector often treats organic loss as an inevitable cost of doing business, but what if processing facilities were designed from the ground up to capture that value? In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by Dr. Alexandra Grygorczyk, a research scientist at Vineland Research and Innovation Centre, to unpack the complex economics, supply chain dynamics, and consumer perceptions driving the upcycled food movement in Canada. Together, they explore how researchers and industry players are working to transform unavoidable byproducts into marketable ingredients. A central insight from the conversation is that upcycling cannot succeed on novelty alone; it must compete on strict economic and functional terms. Grygorczyk explains that while innovators often view the "upcycled" label as a primary selling feature, it is really just a cherry on top. To be viable, an upcycled ingredient must meet rigorous market standards for pricing, functionality, and sensory appeal. Furthermore, food manufacturers looking to valorize their byproducts frequently hit roadblocks because doing so requires stepping outside their traditional business spheres, building entirely new supply chains, and forming novel partnerships. The conversation also tackles the operational hurdles within food processing facilities, where the physical layout of a plant can inadvertently turn clean, nutrient-dense byproducts into waste. Grygorczyk shares a striking example from the greenhouse and vegetable processing sectors, where the moment a byproduct touches a non-food-grade surface or bin, it legally and practically becomes waste. Shifting this paradigm requires a cultural and structural change among producers, viewing byproducts not as garbage to be discarded, but as a secondary grade of food that requires deliberate diversion strategies before contamination occurs. Listeners will take away a nuanced understanding of the intersection between food science, supply chain logistics, and consumer psychology. Grygorczyk notes that consumer acceptance hinges heavily on framing; while terms involving "waste" can trigger unfounded food safety fears, framing upcycled foods around frugality and resource efficiency resonates powerfully. As Canada establishes its own chapter of the Upcycled Food Association, this episode offers a vital look at why the agri-food sector must rethink its manufacturing infrastructure to build a truly sustainable and economically resilient food supply. Topics: Upcycled Foods, Food Science, Supply Chain Logistics, Food Waste Reduction, Applied Research, Consumer Perception, Agri-Food Innovation, Value-Added Processing 00:00 Upcycled Food 02:05 Why Upcycling Matters 03:16 Becoming a Food Scientist 06:08 Vineland and Industry Partners 10:24 What Upcycled Food Means 12:10 Surprising Upcycling Wins 14:28 Making the Business Case 17:12 Ecosystem and Marketplaces 21:08 Canada Chapter and UFA 24:25 Canadian Leaders and Growth 26:16 Supply Chain Scale Challenges 30:22 Consumer Perception and Framing 32:45 Disclosure and Food Safety Fears 36:43 How Consumer Research Works 38:45 Policy Ideas to Accelerate 40:42 Food Waste Before Retail 45:07 Shout Outs and Wrap Up

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45: The Case for Affordable Electric Tractors with werkrtractors.com

Summary: Jesse Hirsh sits down with Stanley Baer, founder of Worker Tractor and a veteran of electrifying lawn care equipment, to discuss the acute need for affordable, lighter-duty electric tractors in sustainable agriculture. Baer argues that by distributing power directly to individual wheels and keeping initial price points accessible, smaller-scale and organic farmers can finally bypass the prohibitive costs and high emissions of conventional diesel machinery. Show notes: In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by Stanley Baer, mechanical engineer and founder of Worker Tractor, to explore a radical reimagining of agricultural equipment for Canada's agri-food sector. While mainstream ag-tech focuses heavily on massive, million-dollar autonomous diesel machines meant for vast prairie operations, Baer makes the case for a much smaller, distributed-power electric alternative. Drawing on his decades of experience electrifying lawn care equipment, Baer explains how his startup is designing a simplified, affordable tractor tailored to the needs of organic and specialty crop farmers who require precision weed control without heavy soil compaction. Central to Baer's design philosophy is distributed power—placing individual motors at each wheel and directly onto implements like mower blades rather than relying on inefficient central gearboxes, belts, and power take-off (PTO) shafts. This architecture not only increases energy efficiency and simplifies mechanical systems, but it also creates a rich digital network using standard can-bus protocols. By monitoring power usage, lift positions, and operator habits, Baer's platform lays a low-cost, upgradeable foundation for future automation, allowing farmers to eventually add computer vision and GPS capabilities without scrapping their initial machinery investment. Throughout the conversation, Baer and Hirsh tackle the economic and manufacturing realities facing Canadian ag-tech innovation. Baer reflects on a recent research trip to China, where widespread adoption of electric commercial vehicles underscores North America's lag in manufacturing infrastructure and state-backed industrial strategy. They also discuss the friction between grant-funded academic artificial intelligence projects and the practical, bootstrapped needs of a solo engineer trying to build a $30,000 tractor that a small-scale market gardener can actually afford without risking their farm's financial survival. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the intersection of climate resilience, mechanical engineering, and farm-level economics in Canada. As rising diesel costs and tightening labor supplies squeeze agricultural producers, Baer's work offers a glimpse into how decentralized, affordable technology can empower growers to experiment with electrification. It is a candid and inspiring look at the hurdles of hardware startups, the value of unconventional design thinking, and what it truly takes to spark grassroots innovation in the food system. Topics: electric tractors, agricultural technology, distributed power, sustainable agriculture, organic farming, mechanical engineering, ag-tech manufacturing, farm equipment costs https://www.werkrtractors.com/

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44: Building Community Resilience Through Inclusive Food Systems and Reciprocity

Title: Building Community Resilience Through Inclusive Food Systems and Reciprocity Summary: In this episode, Jesse Hirsh, Jenn MacTavish, RJ Taylor, Sherida Ryan, Elaine Power, and Ruth Knight gather for a podcast book club to discuss the principles of reciprocity, abundance, and gift economies in relation to the agri-food sector. Drawing on a shared reading, the panel explores how community resilience, human relationships, and alternative exchange models can challenge hyper-capitalist defaults in modern agriculture. The conversation highlights the tensions between transactional commerce and relational farming, and asks what it takes to cultivate true belonging. Show notes: In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by Ruth Knight, Jenn MacTavish, Elaine Power, RJ Taylor, and Sherida Ryan for a collaborative book club discussion exploring the themes of reciprocity, gift economies, and community resilience. The central question animating the conversation is how the principles of ecological and social abundance can be integrated into the economic realities of Canada's agri-food sector. Moving beyond abstract theory, the panel reflects on what it means to build systems rooted in mutual aid rather than zero-sum competition, asking how these dynamics manifest in everyday agricultural practices and rural-urban divides. Developing the first key insight, RJ Taylor shares a grounded perspective from his farming operations, contrasting a purely transactional, profit-maximizing market exchange with a relationship-based interaction he experienced with a local Mennonite wood craftsman. This narrative sparks a broader dialogue led by Sherida Ryan and Elaine Power about the pervasive influence of capitalist culture and the 'rational man' fallacy. The panel considers how relational farming models—where farmers engage directly with customers and communities—help preserve human connection even when money changes hands, proving that commercial transactions do not inherently have to strip away social bonds and shared values. Expanding on this tension, the group examines the structural barriers to practicing a gift economy in modern society, particularly the lack of legal 'third spaces' where food and knowledge can be freely shared without running afoul of regulations or commercial friction. Jenn MacTavish introduces a vital distinction between simply hearing someone and actively listening to understand them, noting that authentic community belonging requires a collective willingness to sit with discomfort. Ruth Knight and Jesse Hirsh build on this by examining the role of knowledge-sharing in agriculture, contrasting the ecological concept of redundancy—which signifies adaptability and resilience—with the negative economic connotations of the word. Listeners will take away a profound appreciation for the leadership required to model reciprocity and relational thinking in an industry often dominated by transactional efficiency. This episode matters deeply to Canada's agri-food sector because it challenges leaders, farmers, and consumers alike to re-examine their place in the food system. By embracing vulnerability, fostering genuine community connections, and valuing ecological and social abundance, agri-food professionals can help design a more inclusive and resilient future. Topics: Reciprocity, Gift Economy, Community Resilience, Relational Farming, Agri-Food Systems, Knowledge Sharing, Social Capital https://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/The-Serviceberry/Robin-Wall-Kimmerer/9781668072240 https://thefutureherd.ca/episodes/episode-044/ 00:00 Serviceberry 02:19 Welcome Back Book Club 03:14 Jen First Impressions 04:56 Reciprocity In Practice 08:17 Rational Man Debate 12:56 Teaching Gift Economy 15:52 Ruth On Hopeful Tone 19:11 Fool Or Role Model 23:04 Markets With Relationships 30:03 Third Spaces For Giving 47:56 Belonging And Discomfort 51:53 Connectors Build Bridges 56:13 Closing Thoughts Next Book

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43: Replacing Mass Production With Production By The Masses with Chris Hildreth

In this episode, host Jesse Hirsh speaks with Chris Hildreth, founder of AgriKit.ca, about decentralizing agri-food infrastructure through modular, custom-built facilities. Drawing on his background as a social entrepreneur and urban farmer, Hildreth argues that small- and medium-scale producers need better on-the-ground support to foster genuine food sovereignty. Together, they explore how moving away from centralized mass production toward community-driven processing can build a more resilient Canadian food system. Show notes: In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by Chris Hildreth, founder of AgriKit.ca, to explore a fundamental shift in how Canada's agri-food sector approaches processing and cold storage. Building on years of hands-on experience running an urban agriculture enterprise called Topsoil in Victoria, Hildreth discusses how small- and medium-scale producers are often left behind by an industrial food system optimized entirely around massive scale. The central question of the conversation examines how communities and independent farmers can reclaim food sovereignty by utilizing modular, adaptable infrastructure that bypasses the capital-intensive hurdles of traditional commercial facilities. Developing a core insight from his academic research and entrepreneurial journey, Hildreth critiques the post-World War II consolidation of North American food production, which relies heavily on monoculture farming concentrated in regions like California. He explains that true resilience requires shifting away from distant supply chains toward hyper-local models where food is grown, processed, and consumed within the same community. By designing custom 20-foot and 40-foot processing units that integrate seamlessly into existing local workflows—whether farming, fishing, or hunting—AgriKit.ca allows producers to drastically reduce labor bottlenecks, eliminate unnecessary transportation emissions, and retain economic value locally. The conversation also tackles the complex tension between bureaucratic regulatory burdens and the practical needs of grassroots food producers. Hildreth emphasizes that while regulations are necessary, navigating them as a DIY bootstrap operation can exhaust even the most dedicated entrepreneurs. To solve this, AgriKit builds its units to national building code compliance and food-safe standards, effectively removing regulatory friction for communities that lack the literacy or resources to navigate municipal red tape. This proactive approach transforms compliance from a barrier into an enabler, giving local operators the professional tools they need to succeed. Ultimately, listeners will take away a compelling vision for a distributed agri-food economy that champions what writer John Moody famously called "production by the masses" instead of mass production. Hildreth demonstrates that profitability and social enterprise are not mutually exclusive, and that empowering local actors with the right infrastructure is essential for Canada's long-term food security. This episode matters because it offers a tangible, actionable alternative to an increasingly fragile industrial food model, proving that the future of agriculture lies in local adaptability, deep listening, and community empowerment. Topics: Modular Food Processing, Food Sovereignty, Social Entrepreneurship, Distributed Supply Chains, Cold Storage Infrastructure, Local Agri-Food, Regulatory Compliance, Urban Agriculture

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42: Feed The People!?

Reimagining Food Systems Beyond Industrial Scapegoats And Binaries Summary: In this lively salon conversation, Jesse Hirsh, Jeanette Herrle, Sherida Ryan, Barb Scott-Cole, Jennifer MacTavish, Elaine Power, RJ Taylor, and Tianna Brand critique the popular book Feed the People for its American-centric worldview, reductionist view of livestock, and failure to address capitalism head-on. The panel contrasts the lived realities of agricultural risk and market competition with academic punditry, exploring alternative frameworks like Indigenous governance and dynamic food pricing. Together, they unpack how moving past simplistic binaries is essential for a resilient Canadian agri-food sector. Show notes: In this episode, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by a diverse panel of agri-food experts for a critical salon discussion of the book Feed the People. The conversation tackles the book's core American-centric blind spots, examining how popular food writing often reduces complex agricultural realities to simplistic villains and heroes. Rather than engaging with the true systemic drivers of modern agriculture, the authors lean heavily on the term "industrial" as a convenient cover for the realities of global capitalism. Throughout the discussion, the panelists pull back the curtain on the actual risks and economic pressures carried by primary producers. Barb Scott-Cole and Jennifer MacTavish highlight how crop and livestock production are squeezed by unpredictable weather, global market competition, and the unreasonable expectation of zero-impact food production. The group critiques the book's reductionist caricature of livestock and its failure to acknowledge the essential ecological role of ruminants, pointing out a frustrating double standard that praises industrial efficiency for crops while demonizing animal protein. The conversation also expands into structural and cultural critiques of how we consume and regulate food. Jesse Hirsh and Tianna Brand draw a sharp contrast between passive, television-like grocery store design and modern, interactive media, while pushing back against rebranded capitalist buzzwords like "democratic hedonism." Bringing a distinct regional and sector perspective, RJ Taylor contrasts cumbersome, outdated provincial aquaculture regulations with Indigenous-led governance models from First Nations which anchor resource management in generational stewardship and direct community accountability rather than bureaucratic paperwork. Ultimately, the episode challenges listeners to look beyond polarizing food narratives and confront the true cost of food production. Elaine Power notes that while good-quality food should cost more to properly support farmers, systemic policy safety nets like a basic income floor are vital to ensure equity for workers and consumers alike. This salon offers an engaging, unfiltered look at what it truly takes to build a resilient, multi-faceted food system in Canada without relying on scapegoats or false binaries. Topics: Food Systems, Agricultural Economics, Livestock Production, Capitalism, Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Governance, Aquaculture, Agricultural Policy

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41: The Logistics of Turning Food Waste Into Economic Value with Jessica Regan

In this episode, Jessica Regan joins the show to explain how FoodMesh tackles Canada's agri-food waste crisis not as a shortage issue, but as a complex logistical and distribution challenge. By building digital infrastructure that connects commercial surplus food to safe alternative outlets—from human donation to animal feed—Regan demonstrates how turning waste into value requires aligning economic ROI with operational viability. The conversation explores everything from municipal zero-waste policies and backhaul transportation efficiencies to the evolving role of food banks in a circular economy. https://foodmesh.ca/ Food waste in the modern agri-food system is an illogical inefficiency driven by a connection and distribution problem rather than a lack of food. In this episode, Jessica Regan joins the show to discuss how FoodMesh operates as a digital matchmaker and data-tracking platform, routing surplus food away from landfills and into safe, compliant alternative outlets within tight timeframes. The conversation unpacks the hidden social infrastructure of food rescue, examining how large supply-chain generators often overlook their waste due to snapshot audits and accepted shrink tolerances, while small and medium-sized enterprises struggle on tight margins without dedicated sustainability staff. A central insight from the discussion is that sustainability initiatives must be anchored in economic reality to succeed. Regan argues that cost is king for businesses, meaning diversion strategies only scale when they directly reduce heavy waste disposal fees, tipping costs, and operational inefficiencies. To overcome these barriers, FoodMesh replaces unpredictable grant funding with a revenue-share and data-stipend model that provides partner food banks with stable, predictable income. This financial backing allows community organizations to hire professional staff, coordinate pickups, and handle perishable goods effectively, turning a chaotic charitable scramble into a streamlined logistical operation. The conversation also tackles the complex web of municipal policies, regional disparities, and agricultural realities across Canada. Urban businesses and rural producers operate on vastly different stages of the waste diversion journey, leading to billions of dollars worth of nutritional biomass ending up in landfills while farmers face soaring feed costs. Regan highlights the enormous potential of utilizing logistical backhauls—empty return trucks and trains heading east from western supply routes—to move surplus food back where it is needed most. Moreover, high-fidelity data collection across tens of thousands of annual pickups reveals supply chain hotspots, exposing the absurdity of manufactured waste where producers overgrow crops simply to guarantee customer supply. Ultimately, this episode challenges listeners to rethink food waste as a systemic design flaw that requires both regulatory carrots and sticks, such as circular waste taxes. Regan shares a visionary outlook where recovered and upcycled food transitions from an emergency measure driven by food insecurity to a mainstream, values-based consumer choice. For Canada's agri-food sector, embracing circularity offers a vital blueprint for building a resilient, collaborative, and economically viable food system from farm to fork. Topics: Food Waste, Circular Economy, Supply Chain Logistics, Agri-Food Innovation, Food Security, Sustainability Data, Municipal Policy

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40: Redesigning Leadership Models for an Uncertain Future

Summary: In this conversation, Jennifer MacTavish, Kaitlyn Kitzan, RJ Taylor, and Tianna Brand examine the deepening leadership crisis in the agri-food sector against a backdrop of compounding global and economic crises. The panellists explore how systemic risk aversion is paralyzing traditional governance, and argue that building resilience requires abandoning obsolete status-quo models in favor of radical collaboration, peer-to-peer connection, and reimagined engagement. Show notes: The agri-food sector is navigating an unprecedented era of overlapping turbulence, from supply chain disruptions and climate volatility to shifting trade dynamics. Yet beneath these operational pressures lies a deeper, less discussed crisis: a severe shortage of leadership. In this episode of The Future Herd, co-hosts Jesse Hirsh and Jennifer MacTavish are joined by panellists Tianna Brand, RJ Taylor, and Kaitlyn Kitzan to confront this challenge head-on. The central question of the conversation is whether traditional leadership frameworks are fit for an era of chronic uncertainty, or if the industry's default governance models are actively repelling the next generation of changemakers. A recurring theme throughout the discussion is how recent economic shocks have bred a profound risk aversion among producers and sector organizations. RJ Taylor, a second-generation fish farmer and industry association lead, shares how market volatility and broken supply chain commitments forced his business into extreme caution, creating a painful paradox where he publicly advocates for sector growth while privately pulling back on expansion. Kaitlyn Kitzan, a Saskatchewan grain and cattle producer and consultant, echoes this sentiment, noting that the combination of market penalties and digital toxicity has driven many agricultural leaders to become intensely reserved. Both guests illustrate how the emotional and financial toll of recent years has made conventional leadership roles look less like opportunities and more like endless 'shit sandwiches,' contributing directly to the burnout and vacancies seen on boards today. To counter this paralysis, the panellists explore practical, grassroots interventions that challenge legacy governance structures. Kitzan shares success stories of shifting annual general meetings from sterile local venues to collaborative, all-inclusive international retreats where members are compelled to connect away from the pressures of the farm. Similarly, Taylor emphasizes the necessity of carving out intentional social spaces and funding peer-to-peer networks for up-and-coming leaders rather than cutting travel and connection budgets during lean times. Tianna Brand adds a crucial foresight perspective, arguing that because historical forecasting data is no longer reliable in a disrupted world, leaders must move away from rigid prediction models and instead build anticipation muscles by asking different questions and tapping into collective community intelligence. Listeners will take away a refreshing, grounded perspective on how the agri-food sector can survive and innovate through crisis not by doubling down on rigid hierarchies, but by embracing radical flexibility, shared responsibilities like co-chair models, and authentic cross-sector collaboration. This episode matters because it pulls back the curtain on the human cost of agricultural leadership today, offering actionable blueprints for how Canada's food system can redesign its institutions to attract and retain the brilliant minds needed for the future. Topics: Agri-Food Leadership, Leadership Crisis, Risk Management, Sector Collaboration, Agricultural Innovation, Governance Models, Strategic Foresight

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39: Transitioning Animal Agriculture to Biological Co-Creation with Suresh Neethirajan

Summary: Dr. Suresh Neethirajan joins host Jesse Hirsh to explore how artificial intelligence, bioacoustics, and digital twin technology are transforming livestock farming from a transactional model into biological co-creation. Together, they discuss bridging the gap between traditional farmer intuition and objective data to improve animal welfare, farm resilience, and food security across Canada. Show notes: In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh sits down with Dr. Suresh Neethirajan, an agricultural engineer and research chair in digital livestock farming, to examine how cutting-edge technology intersects with animal agriculture. The central question of the conversation is how the agri-food sector can move past urban-centric technology strategies and black-box AI models to embrace multidisciplinary, context-aware tools that serve both livestock and producers. Dr. Neethirajan shares his unique perspective on why biology must anchor engineering and computer science, arguing that successful innovation requires respecting the complex, five-sense intuition that experienced farmers bring to their barns every single day. Dr. Neethirajan unpacks the emerging concept of digital twins in livestock agriculture, explaining how multi-modality data—from continuous environmental metrics and computer vision to bioacoustic vocalizations—allows researchers to build virtual avatars of animal husbandry systems. Unlike static dashboards that only show historical data, digital twins enable farmers and researchers to run complex "what-if" simulations regarding feed supply chain disruptions, heat stress mitigation, and methane emission reductions without placing animals under external stress. This capability represents a monumental shift from reactive management to proactive, predictive stewardship that directly supports net-zero goals and operational sustainability. The conversation also tackles the vital realities of data ownership, open-source research, and interoperability across both small-scale and large-scale farming operations. Dr. Neethirajan emphasizes that technology must be designed as a pull rather than a push, ensuring that farmers retain ultimate decision-making authority and are never burdened with prohibitive licensing costs or chaotic, proprietary data silos. By focusing on non-invasive computer vision and accessible mobile applications that translate animal vocalizations, his research team demonstrates how tiny operational adjustments—such as optimizing ventilation timing or slightly shifting poultry production cycles—can yield dramatic improvements in animal welfare and recovery resilience. Ultimately, this episode challenges listeners to rethink the foundational philosophy of animal agriculture by advocating for a transition from transactional farming to biological co-creation. As Dr. Neethirajan explains, technology should act as an empathetic bridge between the human and animal kingdoms, fostering harmony, shared prosperity, and robust food security during tumultuous global times. For Canadian producers, policymakers, and technologists alike, this conversation provides a visionary roadmap for integrating artificial intelligence with deep biological respect to secure the future of our food systems. Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twins, Precision Livestock, Bioacoustics, Animal Welfare, Data Interoperability, Agri-Food Policy, Biological Co-Creation

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38: How Farm-To-Table Chefs Are Building Rural Community Resilience with Joel Gray

Summary: Chef-farmer Joel Gray of Down Home Restaurant discusses how integrating small-scale farming, live-fire cooking, and intimate agritourism fosters rural economic development and community resilience. In conversation with Jesse Hirsh, Joel explores how moving beyond toxic restaurant cultures and embracing seasonal, 'perfectly imperfect' ingredients creates a transparent, high-empathy food system. Show notes: In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh sits down with chef-farmer Joel Gray, co-founder of Down Home Restaurant in Grey County, Ontario, to explore how grassroots culinary models are reshaping the future of Canadian agri-food. Joel shares his journey from working in urban kitchens sourcing from dozens of small farms to establishing an integrated, 16-seat farmhouse dining experience where agriculture and hospitality merge. The central argument of the conversation is that true rural resilience relies on human-scale infrastructure, direct relationships between growers and eaters, and an economic model that recirculates capital directly back to neighboring small-scale producers. Throughout the discussion, Joel unpacks the shared psychology of chefs and farmers, noting that both operate under the pressures of perishable goods, unpredictable elements, and an ever-changing economy. By eliminating standard a la carte menus in favor of a curated 'take care of me' dining experience, Joel removes traditional kitchen stress and mirrors the unpredictability of agriculture. This philosophy extends to team building, where he deliberately rejects the toxic burnout tropes popularized in modern media in favor of a sustainable, human-first workplace built on emotional health and shared purpose. The conversation also tackles the systemic hurdles facing Canada's local food movement, including rigid zoning laws, regulatory bottlenecks around local abattoirs, and a risk-averse agricultural focus on monocultures. Joel argues that restaurants should act as powerful advocacy tools for sustainable food by proving to consumers at the table that ecologically conscious farming produces superior flavour. Rather than relying on industrial food systems driven by fear and bureaucracy, pioneers like Joel and his network of regional collaborators are building decentralized infrastructure, such as on-farm stores and direct-to-consumer supply chains, that empower rural communities. Listeners will take away a renewed appreciation for the revolutionary power of shared food, as well as practical insights into how small-scale agritourism can drive regional economic development. This episode matters because it offers a tangible blueprint for what a decentralized, ecologically sound Canadian food system looks like in practice, proving that local resilience starts with caring for the soil, the community, and the human beings at both ends of the supply chain. Topics: Agritourism, Farm-To-Table, Rural Resilience, Soil Health, Culinary Innovation, Local Food Systems, Restaurant Culture

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37: Improvisation and Intuition Are the Requirements for AI in Agriculture

Summary: This episode explores how artificial intelligence functions in agriculture not as a tool of rigid control, but as a facilitator of human intuition and field-level improvisation. Host Jesse Hirsh is joined by Donald Killorn and Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi to examine the practical, ethical, and computational realities of deploying AI across Canadian agri-food systems. Show notes: In this episode of The Future Herd, hosts Jesse Hirsh and Jenn MacTavish bring together two of Canada's leading voices on technology and agriculture—Donald Killorn and Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi—to examine how artificial intelligence intersects with the day-to-day realities of farming and agri-food leadership. While AI is frequently marketed as a technology of absolute control and automation, agriculture presents a unique counter-narrative. Farming requires constant adaptation to unpredictable weather, volatile markets, and biological complexity, meaning that any effective technology must support—rather than replace—human intuition and improvisation. Donald Killorn shares insights from the front lines of agricultural deployment in Prince Edward Island, detailing how his team manages the tension between blue-sky technological curiosity and the immediate operational needs of farmers. He discusses the architectural necessity of building localized "harnesses" and sentinel layers to protect sensitive farm data while leveraging large language models for complex tasks like carbon credit documentation and climate risk modeling. Killorn argues that the rollout of AI on farms is fundamentally an infrastructure and design challenge that demands human-centered aesthetics and rigorous cybersecurity. Expanding on the research side, Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi explores the intersection of computational biology, plant breeding, and artificial intelligence at the University of Guelph. He addresses the critical challenge of AI hallucination and data verification in research, warning that circular citation loops by AI agents can skew scientific findings if not properly governed. Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi also introduces the revolutionary potential of quantum AI to process complex genetic and environmental combinations, offering a way to breed crop varieties tailored for the extreme climate conditions of the next decade. The conversation closes with a grounded evaluation of the environmental costs associated with generative AI and the imperative of maintaining grower trust above all else. Listeners will walk away with a deeper appreciation for the governance, infrastructure, and leadership required to navigate the AI transition in Canada's agri-food sector thoughtfully, ensuring that technology serves as an enabler of freedom and resilience rather than a black-box constraint. Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Agricultural Technology, Plant Breeding, Climate Adaptation, Data Governance, Quantum AI, Cybersecurity, Human-Centered Design

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36: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up Through Food

Host Jesse Hirsh sits down with Alissa Overend, Charles Levkoe, and Elaine Power to dismantle the illusion of cheap food, corporate grocery monopolies, and the systemic capture of agricultural policy. Together, they argue that true food sovereignty requires moving past superficial market-driven fixes to reclaim food as a public good and a catalyst for democratic renewal. Show notes: In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh is joined by food scholars and advocates Alissa Overend, Charles Levkoe, and Elaine Power for a rigorous examination of the Canadian agri-food sector. The conversation cuts past the comforting rhetoric of federal food strategies to confront a stark reality: an industrialized food system defined by extreme corporate concentration, captured regulatory bodies, and the externalization of ecological and human costs. The central argument challenges listeners to see food not merely as a retail commodity or a line item in a household budget, but as the foundational infrastructure of our democracy, health, and social fabric. Opening the discussion, the panel tackles the myth of "cheap food," exposing how low sticker prices at the supermarket mask massive subsidies, exploited labor, and environmental degradation. With just five major grocery chains controlling roughly 80% of Canada's retail market—and two multinational firms dominating 95% of beef processing—the food chain operates as a consolidated oligopoly that squeezes primary producers while raking in record profits. The guests discuss how government interventions frequently amount to toothless market tinkering rather than addressing root structural problems, noting that corporate lobbyists enjoy direct backroom access that renders public consultation forums largely theatrical. The conversation also explores the dangerous intersection of international trade agreements, deregulation, and surveillance capitalism within modern retail environments. From attempts to fast-track U.S. pesticide regulations to the rise of ag-gag laws that shield industrial slaughterhouses from public scrutiny, the panel outlines how policy is actively weaponized against public health and food sovereignty. Yet, despite these heavy structural barriers, the discussion pivots toward powerful counter-weights, including the vital insights held by front-line food workers, the necessity of evidence-backed policies like basic income, and the organizing potential of local food policy councils. Ultimately, this episode offers both a sobering systemic critique and a hopeful call to action for Canada's agri-food sector. Listeners will walk away with a deeper understanding of why reforming the food system is inseparable from reforming our democracy itself. By shifting our perspective away from shareholder-driven models and toward human- and environment-centered governance, the episode proves that food remains one of our most potent arenas for building shared culture, demanding accountability, and finding common ground across a polarized society. Topics: Food Sovereignty, Corporate Concentration, Agricultural Policy, Democracy, Food Distribution, Labor Rights, Trade Agreements, Basic Income

Announcement: Feed the People Salon

Feed the People! live Future Herd salon - Date: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 - Time: 2:00 p.m. EDT - Duration: 90 minutes - Book: [*Feed the People!: Why Industrial Food Is Good and How to Make It Even Better*](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/jan-dutkiewicz/feed-the-people/9781541603783/) by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel N. Rosenberg - Participant RSVP: hello@thefutureherd.ca The salon uses the book as a shared starting point for a Canadian conversation about the systems that feed people, how they change, and how public narratives shape what is possible to see and do.

35: City Talent Needs to Flow Back Into Agriculture with Daniel Kunanec

Summary: Urban-rural divides dissolve when young people experience the agricultural food system firsthand. In this episode, high school educator Dan Kunanec joins host Jesse Hirsh to discuss how Don Mills Collegiate's campus farm and circular food economy are successfully growing the next generation of urban farmers, food system thinkers, and city builders. Show notes: Canada's agri-food sector faces an urgent demographic and labor crunch, yet the traditional pipeline of talent relies exclusively on youth migrating out of rural areas. In this episode of The Future Herd, host Jesse Hirsh sits down with Dan Kunanec, a veteran teacher at Toronto's Don Mills Collegiate, to challenge that paradigm. For 26 years, Dan has turned a high school campus into a thriving applied ecosystem featuring a 40-tree orchard, a 160-vine vineyard, an aquaponics setup, and a full kitchen. Together, they explore a radical proposition: instead of waiting for rural youth to save agriculture, we can cultivate agricultural literacy and channel urban talent back into the food system. Central to Dan's teaching philosophy is the 'loaf of bread' metaphor, which demonstrates how a single food item can anchor a multidisciplinary curriculum spanning science, history, engineering, and community-building. Rather than forcing students through dry, abstract textbook units, Dan builds exciting, tangible projects first—such as planting rare indigenous corn seeds or harvesting produce for Michelin-recognized restaurants—and maps them back to the Ontario Green Industries curriculum. This approach treats students as active co-learners, proving that traditional classrooms can be replaced with vibrant, project-based environments where young people build real-world confidence and problem-solving skills. The conversation also tackles the complex intersections of food security, cultural identity, and crisis response. Dan shares how the school farm pivoted during the COVID-19 pandemic to distribute nutritious meal packages to vulnerable urban families, inspiring students to pursue careers in food security and community advocacy. By leveraging urban microclimates, saving heirloom seeds, and connecting students with regenerative farmers, chefs, and craftspeople across Ontario, Dan bridges the urban-rural divide. These experiences teach students that seasonality, soil regeneration, and ecological stewardship are not distant concepts, but sensory, lived realities. Ultimately, this episode offers an inspiring blueprint for how Canada can address its agricultural succession crisis by transforming urban schools into incubators for future food leaders. Listeners will walk away with a fresh appreciation for experiential education, the power of local food economies, and why growing farmers must begin long before young people ever step foot on a commercial farm. It is a vital conversation about finding examples of the future that are already alive and thriving in the present. Topics: Urban Agriculture, Agri-Food Talent, Experiential Education, Circular Food Economy, Food Literacy, Regenerative Agriculture, High School Innovation

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34: Biomanufacturing Is the Next Agricultural Superpower Play with John Rafferty

John Rafferty, CEO of Ontario Genomics, makes the case that Canada's combination of vast acreage, abundant water, and clean energy positions it to become not just an agricultural superpower but a biomanufacturing one — if it can close the capital gap in scaling infrastructure. Rafferty argues that genomics is moving from a specialised research field into the operating system of a circular economy, where biomass inputs from Canadian farms can replace petroleum-derived plastics, food colourants, and industrial chemicals. The episode is a call to action for policymakers, farmers, and investors to treat biomanufacturing not as a science project but as Canada's next major export industry. Show notes: In this episode, John Rafferty unpacks the twin missions of Ontario Genomics: precision health on one side, and food and industrial biotech on the other. His central argument is that genomics has spent twenty-five years generating research and is now at a commercialisation inflection point, one where Canada's natural endowments — land, water, and clean energy — make it uniquely positioned to lead a global shift from extraction-based manufacturing toward circular biomanufacturing. He frames this not as a moonshot but as an obligation: roughly sixty percent of everything humans consume, he contends, can be bio-manufactured from agricultural biomass inputs and returned to the earth in a genuinely circular way. Rafferty is direct about where the bottleneck lies. Ontario, despite hosting the majority of Canada's genomics innovators and post-secondary talent, lacks accessible biomanufacturing scale-up capacity at the thousand-litre range that startup companies need to prove their unit economics. Companies that want to produce hundreds of kilogrammes of a bio-manufactured sweetener or food colourant — enough to demonstrate price competitiveness against commodity sugar — are currently forced to travel to Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, or another country entirely. Rafferty describes this as a capital problem, not a regulatory one, and he draws a deliberate analogy to the renewable energy transition: just as solar and wind power required patient investment before reaching cost parity with fossil fuels, bio-manufactured materials need that same scaling runway before they can displace petroleum-based plastics and chemicals on commercial terms. A second tension runs through the conversation: the challenge of communicating a field where, as Rafferty puts it, there is a genome in everything. Ontario Genomics works across soil microbial health, cellular agriculture, rare-disease therapeutics, water bioremediation, and food ingredient innovation simultaneously — a breadth that risks dissolving into what he calls talking about world peace. His proposed solution is to pursue ground-level victories first: working directly with farmer groups to diversify revenue streams, demonstrating that Canadian-grown biomass can supply food ingredients currently imported at supply-chain risk, and letting those concrete wins build the narrative. He also raises the AI paradox squarely — acknowledging that artificial intelligence is accelerating genomic data analysis and commercialisation timelines while simultaneously carrying a significant and troubling environmental footprint of its own, a tension he says society has not yet honestly reckoned with. For listeners in Canada's agri-food sector, this episode reframes a familiar question — how do we add value to what we grow? — at a much larger scale of ambition. Rafferty's vision is of Canadian farmers as feedstock partners in a national biomanufacturing industry that exports bio-plastics, proteins, and specialty ingredients the same way Canada has always exported grain and oilseeds, but with far greater value per acre. His policy ask is equally concrete: a national network of scaling facilities, challenge-based funding tied to specific import-substitution targets, and regulatory mandates with hard dates — the kind of policy signal that turned renewable electricity from an experiment into an industry. Whether Canada chooses to act on those assets or continues to send raw biomass across borders is, Rafferty argues, a question of political will, not scientific capability. Topics: Biomanufacturing, Circular Economy, Genomics Commercialisation, Scale-Up Infrastructure, Agricultural Superpowers, Soil Microbial Health, AI and Genomics, Food Innovation Policy

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33: Meeting People Where Their Futures Already Are with Tianna Brand

Title: Meeting People Where Their Futures Already Are Summary: Foresight practitioner Tianna Brand argues that the single most important move a leader or organization can make is to resist arriving with pre-baked futures and instead start by uncovering the visions, assumptions, and lived experiences people already carry. Drawing on her work introducing futures thinking to the World Organisation for Animal Health and her background with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Brand shows how that principle unlocks genuine agency in contested spaces — from zoonotic disease preparedness to farmer resistance to regulation. The conversation traces a path from organisational humility and the Three Horizons Method to a provocative call for strategy documents reimagined as storybooks of multiple futures. Show notes: Tianna Brand is a foresight practitioner and board member of the Association of Professional Futurists whose career has spanned the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), and international bodies including the OECD and UNESCO. She joins The Future Herd to make a case that feels simple but runs counter to most institutional instinct: when navigating uncertainty — whether in a century-old scientific body or a farmers' association wrestling with regulatory distrust — you do not arrive with the future already decided. You meet people where their futures already are, surfacing what is already in their heads before you attempt to shape what comes next. Brand traces this conviction back to her experience introducing futures thinking inside WOAH, an organisation whose culture was anchored in scientific evidence and disease modelling. Rather than framing foresight as something foreign, she connected it to risk frameworks scientists already used — horizon scanning, emergency management cycles, the recognition that outbreaks never arrive from a single direction. The lesson she drew was methodological and cultural at once: foresight gains traction not through grand gestures but through what she calls 'stealth' — using a speculative conversation about COVID in farmed animals, for instance, to quietly demonstrate how unpacking second- and third-order impacts across an entire organisation produces better decisions than tight disease modelling alone. Culture, she insists (citing futurist Sohail Inayatullah's formulation), eats strategy for breakfast; finding internal champions and working within existing methods matters as much as the quality of the foresight tool itself. The conversation sharpens around a live tension in Canadian agriculture: the gap between epidemiologists who understand zoonotic transmission risks and producers who experience regulation as control imposed from outside. Brand's response is direct — coming in with futures already baked will be mistrusted immediately, because the underlying fear is loss of agency. Instead, she describes the Three Horizons Method developed by Bill Sharpe and Tony Hodgson as a practical scaffold: Horizon One maps the current agri-food system and its built-in limits; Horizon Three holds the visionary futures stakeholders actually want; and the messy, entrepreneurial Horizon Two is where seeds of change — already visible if you look — can be leveraged to move toward those visions. She extends this into a proposal that strategy documents become storybooks, populated by leader-characters whose competencies can be tracked against the futures being built, turning what is usually an anchor document into a living, narrative accountability tool. For agri-food leaders in Canada and beyond, Brand's episode offers both a philosophical reframe and practical footholds. The future is not something happening to us, she argues — we are actively creating the conditions for things like avian influenza outbreaks or regulatory breakdown, which means we also hold the agency to create different conditions. Humility, participation, and a willingness to hold multiple futures simultaneously are not soft skills; they are the operational prerequisites for leadership that can actually navigate complexity. At a moment when agricultural associations are struggling with legitimacy deficits and the sector faces compounding pressures from climate, biosecurity, and trade, Brand's framework for meeting people where their futures already are may be one of the more consequential ideas the Future Herd has yet put on the table. https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVHDZUnCY=/ Topics: Futures Thinking, Three Horizons Method, Organisational Culture, Zoonotic Disease Risk, Agricultural Leadership, Systems Thinking, Policy and Regulation, Agency and Participation

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32: Food Security Cannot Be Separated From Ecological Health with Sarah Elton

Sarah Elton — journalist-turned-academic and author of Locavore — argues that genuine food security requires expanding our definition of 'all' to include not just every human being but every organism and ecosystem that sustains the food system. Drawing on posthumanist theory, microbiology, and years of empirical research, she makes the case that health is not a condition possessed by individual bodies but a property that exists across socioecological systems. The conversation traces her intellectual journey from covering the local food movement to situating the human colon inside the food system itself. Show notes: Sarah Elton is a researcher, writer, and academic whose career has moved from CBC journalism and long-form books — including her 2010 work Locavore — through a PhD and into teaching and research at the intersection of food systems, ecological public health, and posthumanist theory. In this episode, she and host Jesse Hirsh take up a deceptively simple question: who, or what, does a food system actually need to feed? The answer Elton arrives at is far more expansive than conventional food-security discourse allows, and it reframes the entire project of building a resilient Canadian agri-food sector. Elton's first key move is to challenge the boundary between the human body and the food system. Drawing on emerging microbiology, she argues that the colon — and the microbial communities that inhabit it — should be understood as constituent parts of the food system, not merely endpoints of it. Microorganisms synthesise metabolites, reduce inflammation, and mediate how humans are nourished; severing them analytically from 'the food system' is, in her words, absurd. This posthumanist framing, in which humans are placed on the same ontological plane as plants, microbes, soil, and wind rather than above them, is not merely philosophical provocation. It has direct implications for how researchers, policymakers, and producers define sustainability: a system that degrades its microbial and ecological substrates is undermining its own capacity to feed anyone. A second tension running through the conversation is the gap between the language of local food and its political deployment. Elton was writing about localism and food sovereignty before farmer's markets became supermarket aesthetics, and she offers a nuanced read of what has changed. She notes that nationalist sentiment triggered by trade threats with the United States has produced a surge in buy-Canadian feeling and, more concretely, a federal food security strategy backed by over three billion dollars in new commitments — a scale of state investment she says she could not have predicted. Yet she is careful to distinguish the grassroots goals of the local food movement from the mechanisms a state-led strategy will actually use, and she is equally careful to distinguish rhetorical sustainability from the ecological grounding she believes genuine food security requires. Co-optation of the language, she suggests, does not automatically deliver the substance. Listeners will come away with a richer vocabulary for thinking about what Canada's agri-food sector is actually trying to sustain — and for whom. Elton's work is a reminder that the sector's most pressing knowledge gaps are not always technical; sometimes they are conceptual, rooted in frameworks that draw the boundaries of 'the food system' too narrowly and too anthropocentrically. At a moment when federal dollars, nationalist energy, and climate pressure are converging on Canadian food policy simultaneously, her ecological public health perspective offers both a corrective and a constructive direction for leaders across the sector. Topics: Food Security Policy, Ecological Public Health, Posthumanist Theory, Microbiome and Food Systems, Local Food Movement, Socioecological Systems, Canadian Agri-Food Leadership

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31: Dark Data and Edge Computing Are Reshaping Canadian Farm Strategy

Summary: This episode brings together Canada's sharpest minds at the intersection of AI and agriculture to make a concrete case: the future of Canadian farm competitiveness will be decided not by whether producers adopt AI, but by how intelligently they manage, govern, and deploy the data they already have. Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi introduces the concept of 'dark data'—the vast archive of unused research and field observations sitting dormant in breeding programs and farm records—arguing it represents an untapped foundation for training custom agricultural AI models. Donald Killorn reveals that choosing between cloud-scale processing and on-farm edge inference could mean the difference between 200 gigawatt hours and just 1.5 gigawatt hours of electricity consumption across Canadian agriculture, making edge computing not just a technical preference but a national energy and sovereignty question. Mohamad Yaghi makes the case that the battle for sovereignty is happening faster than we realize as global data governance threatens to outpace local agency. Show notes: This episode of The Future Herd gathers Jesse Hirsh, Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi, Mohamad Yaghi, Jennifer MacTavish, and Donald Killorn for a rigorous, advanced-level conversation about what it will actually take to make artificial intelligence work for Canadian farmers. The central argument is not that AI is coming to agriculture—it is already here—but that the decisions Canadian producers, researchers, and policymakers make right now about data governance, compute architecture, and model sovereignty will determine whether the productivity gains from AI accrue to Canadian farms or flow to the proprietary platforms of multinational equipment manufacturers and cloud providers. This episode is less a primer on AI and more a strategic briefing on the infrastructure choices that will define the next agricultural policy framework. One of the most striking contributions comes from Mohsen Yoosefzadeh Najafabadi, who introduces the concept of 'dark data' to describe the enormous volume of agricultural research observations that are collected, archived, and never used again. Drawing on his own plant breeding programme—where he evaluates 200,000 individual plants but ultimately selects a handful—he points out that the discarded data represents precisely the kind of rich, domain-specific training material needed to build trustworthy, custom AI models for agriculture. His argument is that researchers and producers often do not mind sharing this kind of archival data, but lack the governance frameworks and institutional strategies to do so responsibly. His proposal: train models internally on pooled dark data, then share the model outputs rather than the raw datasets, preserving privacy while unlocking collective intelligence. Donald Killorn grounds the conversation in the physical and political realities of deploying AI at farm scale, reporting directly from a week that included installing a rooftop WiFi gateway in eastern PEI and presenting to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture. His core insight is that the question of where computation happens—in the cloud versus at the field edge—is not merely a technical detail but a strategic decision with massive implications for energy consumption, data sovereignty, and farm autonomy. He estimates that moving every data point from Canadian farms to central models would require roughly 200 gigawatt hours of electricity, but that training edge inference models to process data locally and send only what is necessary upstream could reduce that figure to approximately 1.5 gigawatt hours. He also raises the unresolved tension with OEM equipment manufacturers like John Deere and Case, whose proprietary data platforms risk locking Canadian producers out of their own farm data, and describes the limits of industry-led interoperability initiatives like AEF's Agon connector. Listeners will come away from this episode with a clearer understanding of why the ROI conversation around AI in agriculture has to move beyond productivity metrics and encompass labour shortage economics, energy infrastructure, data interoperability, and national policy. Mohamad Yaghi frames the stakes plainly: AI is most valuable not as an automation tool but as a decision-support layer that helps producers commit capital more wisely before it is spent. Taken together, the panel makes a compelling case that Canada's agri-food sector sits at a genuine inflection point—one where the choices made in the next two years around data governance and compute strategy will either entrench dependency on foreign platforms or establish a sovereign, resilient, and genuinely productive AI infrastructure for Canadian agriculture. Topics: Dark Data, Edge Computing, Data Sovereignty, AI Model Training, Farm Decision Support, Equipment Interoperability, Agricultural Policy, Energy and Compute

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30: AgriFood Names the Tension Between Capital and Care with Elaine Power

Summary: Elaine Power, a food scholar at Queen's University, argues that the word "AgriFood" itself encodes a fundamental contradiction: the agri side serves corporate capital while the food side is rooted in care, community, and life. In this conversation with Jesse Hirsh, Power traces how invisible and undervalued labour—from racialized farmworkers to domestic cooks—holds the food system together while extracting the least reward from it. Her analysis connects feminist political economy, the ultra-processed food industry, and ecological crisis into a single, unflinching diagnosis of what is broken and why. Show notes: Elaine Power is a food scholar at Queen's University whose career has moved fluidly across dietetics, feminist political economy, and food systems research. In this episode, she joins Jesse Hirsh to explore a tension embedded in the very language we use to describe the sector: that "AgriFood" quietly names two opposing logics—one oriented toward capital accumulation, the other toward nourishment, care, and sustaining life. That friction, Power argues, is not incidental. It is the organizing contradiction of the modern food system, and almost everything that is broken about that system flows from it. Power's first major insight is about the systematic invisibility of labour across the entire food chain. From temporary foreign workers doing backbreaking fieldwork in Canadian agriculture, to grocery clerks briefly celebrated as heroes during the pandemic before being returned to minimum wage and precarious shifts, to the uncompensated domestic labour that happens in every kitchen—Power argues that the people who actually feed us are consistently rendered invisible and undervalued. She connects this pattern explicitly to race and gender: agricultural labour in North America has historically been and remains largely racialized, while domestic food labour has been feminized and therefore dismissed. The feminist movement's fraught relationship with the kitchen, she notes, was a rational response to that devaluation—but it created an opening that corporate food manufacturers eagerly filled with ultra-processed products that monetized the very work society refused to honour. A second tension Power surfaces is convenience. The agro-industrial food system did not simply respond to a demand for convenience—it manufactured and deepened that demand, replacing the social and nutritional value of cooking with cheap ingredients repackaged as food-like products. Power draws on Tony Winson's concept of "pseudo-foods" to argue that the profit logic of large food multinationals is structurally opposed to genuine nourishment. Meanwhile, the ecological costs of industrial agriculture—she cites hydrogen sulphide poisoning from seaweed blooms caused by fertilizer runoff off the coast of France as a vivid, lethal example—are externalized onto communities and ecosystems that have no seat at the table. Revaluing real food and the labour that produces it, she suggests, would require confronting capitalism's tendency to invert what actually matters. Listeners will come away from this conversation with a sharper vocabulary for naming what feels wrong about the food system and a clearer sense of why reforming it demands more than consumer choice or technological fixes. For anyone working in or thinking about Canada's agri-food sector, Power's analysis is a necessary provocation: the sector cannot build a legitimate future without honestly accounting for whose labour it depends on, whose health it sacrifices, and whose voices it continues to exclude. In a moment when food security, trade disruption, and climate pressure are converging, this episode makes the case that the most radical thing the sector could do is take care seriously. Topics: Labour Invisibility, Feminist Food Politics, Ultra-Processed Food, Corporate Agri-Food, Convenience Culture, Racialized Farm Labour, Food System Values, Ecological Crisis

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